At 6:58 on Wednesday morning, Daniel Mercer had been awake for twenty-three hours.
He knew this because the digital clock above the garage office door had stopped changing meaning around four.
At midnight it had been useful.
At two, irritating.
At five, insulting.
Now it simply glowed red against the pale blue light entering through the open bay.
6:58.
Rain had ended less than an hour earlier.
The South Side streets beyond Mercer Auto Works were wet and empty, reflecting telephone poles, traffic lights, and the first weak gold from the eastern sky.
Inside, Daniel leaned over the rear engine compartment of a silver Porsche Carrera GT and tried not to think about how badly he needed sleep.
His hands were black with grease.
His charcoal T-shirt had dried salt along the collar.
A streak of something dark crossed his left cheek.
He had cut one knuckle opening an access panel around three-thirty and wrapped it in electrical tape because the first-aid kit was in the office, and walking twenty feet to retrieve a bandage had seemed less important than finding out why a two-million-dollar car refused to stay alive after reaching operating temperature.
That decision now struck him as stupid.
Not unusually stupid.
Just ordinary tired-person stupid.
He pushed a connector aside and shone a penlight deeper into the engine bay.
Behind him, heels clicked softly over concrete.
Daniel heard them.
He did not turn.
“You have been staring at the same wire for three minutes.”
The woman's voice was smooth, amused, and much too awake for seven in the morning.
Daniel kept working.
“It’s not the same wire.”
“It looks exactly like the same wire.”
“That’s why I’m the mechanic.”
A pause.
Then:
“You’re also very rude before breakfast.”
Daniel finally looked over his shoulder.
Victoria Hale stood less than two feet behind him.
That was closer than she had been five minutes ago.
He noticed because it was difficult not to notice anything about Victoria Hale.
She was thirty-eight, though half the internet apparently believed she was younger and business magazines seemed incapable of mentioning her age without also mentioning the fourteen-billion-dollar investment firm she had built.
Daniel had known none of that when she first arrived.
All he knew then was that at 11:17 the previous night, a black flatbed had appeared outside his garage carrying a silver Carrera GT and a woman who looked as if she had stepped out of a private event on the Gold Coast and somehow ended up beneath the fluorescent lights of a neighborhood repair shop.
She wore a fitted black dress, black heels, a silver necklace, a watch Daniel suspected cost more than every tool in the building, and an expression that suggested she had never once in her life been impressed by somebody telling her a problem was impossible.
Her long chestnut-brown hair had been perfectly styled when she arrived.
It was less perfect now.
Daniel preferred it that way.
Not that he intended to mention it.
At first, he assumed she was the owner’s wife.
Then perhaps the owner’s girlfriend.
Then, after she corrected the flatbed driver’s insurance information from memory, Daniel realized the car was hers.
When she mentioned casually that two Porsche specialists and a private collector’s technician had failed to solve the fault, Daniel asked why she had brought it to him.
Victoria looked at the faded MERCER AUTO WORKS sign.
“Because the man who transported it said you once repaired a 959 that three dealerships gave up on.”
“That was eight years ago.”
“Did you repair it?”
“Yes.”
“Then the eight years don’t matter.”
Daniel had taken the job.
Not because he liked her.
Not because he disliked her.
Because there were only a few hundred Carrera GTs in the country, and he had never been good at walking away from a difficult machine.
Now Victoria leaned over his shoulder.
Her hair brushed the sleeve of his shirt.
Daniel became abruptly aware that she smelled nothing like a garage.
Something subtle.
Warm.
Expensive.
He looked at her.
She looked at the engine.
“What?”
“You’re in my light.”
“I’m behind you.”
“You’re still somehow in my light.”
“That sounds physically impossible.”
“So did your car six hours ago.”
Her mouth curved.
“That almost sounded flirtatious.”
“It was fatigue.”
“Disappointing.”
Daniel turned back to the car.
Victoria did not step away.
He could feel her presence beside him.
Not touching.
Almost.
That was somehow worse.
Or better.
He had not decided.
He reached toward a relay block.
Victoria watched his hands.
“You really think you found it?”
“I think I found something.”
“That sounds less encouraging.”
“It’s mechanics.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means certainty comes after testing.”
Victoria folded her arms.
“What happened to confidence?”
“Confidence is useful for people who sell things.”
“And mechanics don’t?”
“We sell accuracy.”
She laughed quietly.
Daniel liked that sound.
That annoyed him.
He moved the penlight.
A tiny section of insulation looked normal.